The Making of the UoN Library Garden

In February, on the University of Nottingham's Web Campus island in Second Life, the IS Learning Team launched the first version of the Library Garden, which acts both as a spot of beauty and as an introduction to ways of using Library resources to conduct research. 

The original plan was for Library representatives to take students on orientation tours through the virtual garden, then invite them to review the information later on their own, however, we are also hoping people will stumble upon it and enjoy the garden for itself, as well as hold meetings there. The garden doesn't replace, but is meant to enhance the comprehensive 'Pathways to Information' web resource: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pathways/

When we were in the early discussion phase with Clare Paulino, who was authoring the content, I showed her some of the ideas I had about containing information inside flowers, which would release their content as people walked past.

Each flower would be animated in a different way, however the structure of the flower allowed easy movement and scripting. I thought that the movement would attract attention and curiosity from a distance, without being visually invasive. I spoke with Yaf Muggins, our programmer, and she created and applied a script to cause the petals of a sample water lily to open, then she applied text to luminous pollen grains, which floated up in lists, collapsing back in as the person walked past. The timing was tricky, but when she tested it in the sandbox, the result was surprisingly beautiful. When we showed the idea in the proposed location next to the SL Trent Building, with pathways bending around the contours of the coast, and bridges to the island, we got the green light to continue

 

All in all, I made so many flowers, and many are still to be seen as works in progress in the sandbox area, but as of yet, only two kinds are animated in the garden, though we hope to replace or improve them some later this year. I really like the land-based flowers, which have little curved golden trumpets, which slowly rotate on approach, catching the eye.

On our RL University of Nottingham campus, there is a circular themed 'Millennium Garden', which inspired my use of the radial theme in the SL version, which apart from circular shapes and a visual reference to one of the granite sculptures in the real one, has no other design elements common. The value of delivering a learning resource through a botanical analogy is simply that it allows us ‘room to grow’.

The curving bridge was inspired by a shape made from a tube prim, which my builder colleague Noono Karu gave to me. I pieced it together in various ways until I had the most curvilinear and organic stone bridge, patterned with a texture from the RL Trent Building flagstones. With a few changes to allow our tour boat to pass under the arch and over a submerged dip, the stone bridges and paths began to define the area.

 

There are several pathways to follow:

The Collaborative Causeway, which follows the bridge across the water, has two stations on it: the Fountain of Finding Research Partners, and the Water Wiki (with the animated lilies).

The Knowledge Boardwalk has seven rotating trumpet-centred flowers, which detail the usefulness of various types of publications: books, encyclopedias, dictionaries, journals, reports, conference proceedings, and standards.

Alongside the boardwalk is a diversion to the Radial Reference Garden, which stands over the water on radial stilts and has soil in pie-shaped plots. When clicked on, the sections have little seedlings which emerge, yielding examples for how to reference a chapter in a book, a patent, a thesis, an online resource, a conference paper, journal article or a book. A further right-click on the sign engraved on the pavement yields a notecard with information which for students may take away for later use.

At the other end of the boardwalk is a wide spiral stairway up to the DIY Statue of Search Tools, where the stacking and removal of carved stones is meant to emulate the sifting of information gathered from search tools. This interactive idea was inspired in part by BBC's 'In the Night Garden' game, where Makka Pakka has stacking stones in his cave.

The stones in the childrens' BBC game make beautiful tones when dropped, but ours simply reveal information when stacked, suggesting use of the following as useful resources to use in searches: reading lists, e-Journals, databases, COPAC, interlibrary loans, library catalogue(s), search engines, the web subject gateway and bibliographic databases. 

We considered a number of analogies for the collection and sifting of information gathered, but Yaf decided that the stacking analogy was one she could make work, and patterned the stones after the texture on an ovoid granite sculpture in the Millenium Garden. I like the soft, round ones best.

From the search tools deck, you can either walk up the hill to the Dissemination Deck, where publishing your research is symbolised by releasing balloons, or follow the stone path down to the Water Wiki, where the closed water lilies open to reveal suggestions for how to work in collaboration with research partners, means of giving credit and of sharing information through tools like blogs, facebook and wikis. I'd like to have made it so that more was to be seen under the lily pads, and indeed, I did texture them appropriately, but I ended up making it possible to walk across the duckweed, in order to prevent unfortunate souls from getting stuck under the flowers and lily pads. Perhaps I will create another resource under the water when we get the chance to develop the garden further.

Following the Collaborative Causeway back to the entry point, the Fountain of Finding Partners is on the right. The water is not yet animated, and we joked that it was the cold snap we went through over the winter break which left it so. In any case, this platform of radial spokes has three pedestals with various symbolic objects, which describe ways of finding research partners, giving examples of resources commonly used. I had fun doing the little scholars, with their billowing capes. 

Yaf Muggins did a lovely job of animating the little glowing cubes meant to represent bibliographic databases. They look good enough to eat (if your graphics card supports 'glow', that is.) Last of all, hidden under the spiral staircase is a meeting area we dubbed the 'Consultation Cove'. Clare and I had a lot of fun coming up with the various names, but hopefully we will get plenty of feedback on the actually functionality of the garden, as a 'feedback survey' and a 'comments' box are placed at the entrance.

Even though the most important consideration in creating the Library Garden was that it was meant to be used as a resource to inform students embarking on research, I personally also wanted it to be a place where anyone would seek out, both for the sake of curiosity and the desire to be in a lush and peaceful setting; a retreat where the sun shone on rainy days and the sunsets were always beautiful. I have yet to animate the fountains and add ambient nature noises, but one thing at a time. (-:

The garden is not really finished, and I am open to comment. Some of the continued improvements or changes will be to:

• animate the fountain.
  
• create more appropriate seedlings in the reference garden
  
• insert more flower varieties, animated to reveal info, based on the work-in-progress flowers displayed in our sandbox
  
• improve timing on the flowers' anims.
  

There are plenty of other things to tweak, but I had a limit of 6 weeks to create the garden, more or less, from concept to completion, so I had to stop at some point, shift focus and hope to find time to tidy up and tweak.

I am so very pleased that we are garnering interest, and I hope that any visitors who haven't much time to linger, will return and give us feedback or suggestions on how to improve the efficacy of the garden or other parts of our island. It is so different now to be getting feedback directly from people who come in contact with my work, even watching and chatting with me as the shapes take form, in comparison to the more anonymous workflow on animations and graphics for the 'flat web'. Go have a look at the garden and release the balloons on top of the hill. I'd love to make it so we could pop them in flight, but first things first...maybe I'll see if we can offer a little bunch of some of the flowers to those who complete the survey or drop a note in the comments box for the first 100 or so people (-: